Forum:Move protection of source pages

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Forums → Archive index → Panopticon archives → Move protection of source pages
This thread has been archived.
Please create a new thread on the new forums if you want to talk about this topic some more.
Please DO NOT add to this discussion.

Opening post

In 2011, @Tangerineduel created Forum:Move protecting all TV story pages, to, guess this, move-protect all television story pages, on the basis that the pages would never need to be moved and to prevent templates from breaking. So what do I want to change? Virtually nothing at all! I mostly agree with the thread, as television story pages very rarely need to be moved.

However, despite the scope of the thread specifically only being about television stories, five months later, @CzechOut unilaterally decided, without — as far as I can tell — any discussion to move protect any and all story pages. Now this I disagree with. I know that under Tardis:Who writes policy, admins can create policy as they decide without discussion, there comes a time where things should be discussed, and this is one of them.

For me at least, I edit lots of more obscure short stories and webcast pages, which are often incorrectly titled, such as The Crash of the Elysium (TV story), which is both incorrect in regards to the story title and dab term (it was never called "The Crash of the Elysium", that was the name of the immersive experience it promoted, and AFAIK it was only released on the BBC website), or more recently, the short story Pitter-Patter (short story), which was actually titled Pitter-patter (short story). With this latter one, as I was in the process of redoing the series navigation of the sources in Doctor Who Annual 2006, I wanted to have the page renamed ASAP so I decided to contact an admin off-Wiki to get the process done faster. In all that time, I could've done multiple page renames!

Often, a lot of source pages have been created around a decade and a half ago, without the same level of modern scrutiny towards title case and the lack thereof, even often using fan documentation rather than the original publication for the names as well as, in some cases, even making up names entirely. These all need to be corrected ASAP, and having to put a rename template on a page and wait until an admin notices... is unideal. Again, I feel I must highlight The Crash of the Elysium (TV story) again...

Now, it would take literally moments for me to correct these sorts of mistakes, as with most pages, I should just be able to hop on to Special:MovePage and correct the title, except for the fact that hundreds of these source pages are move-protected. My solution? Currently, I have to contact and admin and/or put {{rename}} on a page, and hope they see it and move it quickly... but they often don't. This isn't a criticism of the admins, mind you, as everyone on this Wiki are volunteers with lives of their own. Now with around seven hundred articles that need renaming, we really ought to allow every regular user to do as much work as they can, rather than piling it up all on the shoulders of admins with limited time.

This will also mean the relevant part of T:MOVE LOCK that codified this unilateral decision should be rectified to match community consensus, as the policy page claims that the policy was created as a result of a forum consensus, which is straight up untruthful.

Additionally, some television story pages should be unprotected, specifically, the old skits and what-have-you that were crossovers from other shows as well as the more obscure minisodes. A lot of the crossver skits have titles like [[Series special (TV story)]] which have been made up as 99% they were just one of dozens of skits within that series and were usually untitled.

TL;DR: all source pages were move-protected without discussion and this is wasting editors' time and placing too much work on the admins' shoulders. Therefore, all source pages that are not mainline episodes of Doctor Who, SJA, K9, etc, should be unprotected (e.g. everything from short stories to comics to obscure television minisodes and so on). 21:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I support this proposal. Finding out the title of a piece of media is wrong or made-up is frustrating, but then finding out the page is move protected is devastating. We don't really have an admin on-site who currently goes through categories like "Category:Proposed mergers" and "Category:Proposed deletions", so putting up a template is basically a way of guaranteeing nothing will be done. This is something that just should be up to users in 99% of cases.

I also want to mention that, as recently as five years ago, users were once not allowed to do any renaming of pages. This has since been changed, as today moving a page as a user is the norm. So, with evolving policies, I think we should restore the ability for regular users to rename these more obscure topics. OS25🤙☎️ 21:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with this for now, with a more active user base it should help prevent vandalism, which is I suspect what drove CzechOut to move protect everything years back. Vandalism and containing overly eager editors' actions to change things is what drove a lot of admin decisions back in the day.
I would say I think that the stories should be move protected to only allow autoconfirmed users – basically anyone logged in. I don't think that will adversely affect anyone trying to make a legitimate edit. --Tangerineduel / talk 02:32, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
That's a fair point; having it set to auto-confirmed users will help mitigate those cases of "page name ON WHEELS" type renames and so on that occasionally happen. 02:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes I agree - that should greatly cut down on casual vandalism while still making everyone happy. OS25🤙☎️ 02:59, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Eh. I don't think it's that hard to make an autoconfirmed troll account. It happens. What I might suggest as a compromise is that we do this, but then add a caveat, which is that a user can request a group of pages gets locked back up (say an anthology or a series range) after they've personally verified that they're accurate. Might be too much work for admins though. Najawin ☎ 03:07, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Well, only issue there is with two sources in the same medium with the same title. A lot of annual short stories/features are named "Meet the Doctor", for example. So while we may get to a point where the titles have been verified, we still need to allow them to be moved when we inevitably get sources with the same name. 03:36, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Yep, I agree we should re-allow source pages to be moved, except TV stories. Autoconfirmed users may be a good move, but I don't have strong feelings either way. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 07:48, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Apologies if this has already been brought up, but another issue with this rule is simply our complicated DAB policies. If two stories of different mediums share a title, we clarify that point by adding DABS like (TV story) and (short story). BUT if two stories in the same medium share a title, we clarify this further within the DAB: Old Soldiers (BBV audio story) vs Old Soldiers (CC audio story) etc. Now, with TV stories it is somewhat unlikely that a new issue like this will come up in the future. New episodes of Doctor Who will try not to share names with Torchwood episodes - in that regard the only real threat is the lack of care for K9 episodes. BUT, when it comes to all other mediums, these overlaps are common and often happen on purpose. So if another short story titled I Am the Doctor comes out, we need to be able to move I Am the Doctor (short story) very quickly as to move the links as well. Thus, protecting these pages from moves halts a very basic execution of policy. OS25🤙☎️ 02:36, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
imo it's a relatively minor issue to temporarily have one of them be slightly prioritized re:dabs. If this doesn't get fixed promptly after being brought to the attention of admins, if these issues pile up, well, we can revisit. Najawin ☎ 02:53, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
But ultimately they'd have a larger workload, their choice. Najawin ☎ 02:54, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
Just today The Green Man (audio story) needs to be moved because of The Green Man (BF audio story). It would've taken moments to fix but now, hours later, nothing has changed because of these unnecessary and unwanted move protections. 04:08, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
And even if it is decided that the pages won't be un-move-protected, at least we'll have actually had a discussion about it! 04:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
The point here is that there are currently people willing to make this change happen, and again it is a very fundamental execution of policy. This wiki struggles to find editors willing to do tasks, because it takes a lot of work and FANDOM isn't as huge as it once was. When you have someone who currently wants to do something that will enforce fundamental policy but you say "No, you have to wait two weeks for an admin to do this" - it's a massive failing in execution. By the time that happens, perhaps said editor is working on something else. Now there's this project - of moving these links - which could have been done over the course of weeks but now might become abandoned.
It's simply obvious that we no longer have a team of admins who are online every single day. That's alright, but I think it's very reasonable to point out that there's many MANY things which the rules state should only be done by admins that the regular non-user base should be able to do. If the only thing missing in the current admin team is someone who can move pages, we should just adjust the rules so that you don't have to become an admin to do that. OS25🤙☎️ 03:44, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I mean, I'm discussing the option at the end where someone requests the relock. Whether the issue presented just now is a defeater for that. I'm unconvinced but an admin should decide.

(But yes, it would be nice if we had a larger editor base and more admins. Not that I want to be an admin, dear lord.) Najawin ☎ 05:04, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Two days later and The Green Man (audio story) hasn't been renamed, proving my point quite precisely. Could've been done in less than two minutes but instead nothing has been done in two days.
And... this isn't the only example of edit-protected pages screwing up progress. Although not a source page, {{Romanas}} has needed an update for a year and a half. But we can't because "iT'S EdIt pRoTeCtEd".
Edit/move protections should be a last resort to prevent vandalism, especially to templates that underpin large swathes of pages, not as an action applied to a lot of pages that inevitably will require updates as more and more sources are churned out, on the off chance someone may vandalise the page... maybe.
Funny thing is, there is this really awesome and cool feature call "reverting an edit". Vandalism? We can revert it, instead of prevent the entire user base of trustworthy editors from ever touching the page.
As an admin, I'm finding myself agreeing with Epsilon here. When I first became an admin, I planned to clean through as many maintenance categories as possible but that didn't end up happening. Admins are volunteers with limited editing time and interests outside of moving pages and the like so, in my eyes, the more this can be made an option for other editors, the better. In the examples presented here, non-admins being able to make the changes required would have saved time for everybody. If this forum rules in favour of unprotection, I can probably wip up a bot to sweep through and unprotect the relevant pages. The only difficulty would be that SOTO or Tangerineduel would have to be around to grant the bot account the admin user group. For now, I'll rename The Green Man (audio story) and I'll see about updating {{Romanas}}. Bongo50 ☎ 08:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
Also now The Little Book of Fate has introduced possibly a new Romana, so this character may have to wait a while until the template can be updated. 19:13, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

There's been more than one case where I accidentally created a short story page at the wrong title and it took months to fix, by which point there were dozens of citations I had to manually fix. I agree with the proposal to allow minor story pages to be speedy renamed by autoconfirmed users. – n8 (☎) 17:54, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

H.M.S. Tardis needs a rename, but because of the move lock, it just... sits there. 20:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
I'd just like to say that I also agree with this in general, as it would be simpler to just move Comic Relief Comic to The Totally Stonking, Surprisingly Educational And Utterly Mindboggling Comic Relief Comic without admin intervention (an example which occurred today). Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 14:34, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree with this proposal. It should be allowed for regular non-admin users to be able to do this. It was in fact me personally who noticed that there were now two different "The Green Man" pages and discovered that the BBV one was move-locked when I tried to move it.
Also, I agree with User:Tangerineduel that this should be limited to users with a logged-in account, as, while yes a troll can technically create an account as Najawin said, but it is far more common that they don’t go to this length. Most trolls and vandalists seem to just go onto wiki to cause their trouble without thoughts of creating accounts. Those few that do, also usually create names that are all too obvious. Danniesen ☎ 15:02, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion

Right, it seems we have pretty clear consensus here. Source pages other than mainline TV stories ought to be move-restricted merely to autoconfirmed users and above, not to admins alone. Will this open us up to the occasional vandal? Perhaps, but ultimately it's a lesser workload for admins to move back such instances of vandalism when they occur. And frankly, it's a pretty rare phenomenon. People like the 'ON WHEELS!' vandal seem if anything to favour prominent in-universe pages like Dalek or The Doctor's TARDIS; the mass vandaliser of Short Trips story pages or something, dedicated enough to his craft to create an autoconfirmed account with which to ply it… seems to be a very rare breed at best. --Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:27, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://tardis.wiki/w/index.php?title=Forum:Move_protection_of_source_pages&oldid=3630730"